Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google Home had a problem accessing its Activity feed and the app’s Settings.
- Device controls and routines worked as normal during this peculiar outage.
- Google has issued a statement on the matter, and most people are reporting usual functions by now.
Update, October 4, 2024 (07:00 PM ET): Although the glitch described below appears to be fixed for many folks, we did receive word from Google on an explanation for the problem. Here is the company’s statement:
We’ve received reports of a small number of users experiencing issues with the Activity feed and Settings tab on the Google Home app on Android. We are currently rolling out a fix and will update users when the issue is resolved. In the meantime, users experiencing device issues should submit feedback through the Google Home app and contact Google Support at g.co/nest/contact.
The original article describing this problem continues after the break.
Original article, October 4, 2024 (03:41 PM ET): A nice smart home is awesome once you’ve got it all set up and configured — all the routines you’ll need created, all the automations defined, and all your devices behaving as they should. But it can also seem a bit like a house of cards, and it often only takes one weak link there for the whole system to start feeling janky and unresponsive. Right now Google Home is experiencing somewhat of a service interruption, and while it’s not quite to the point where we can’t turn our lights on, it’s nonetheless pretty annoying.
Open up the Google Home on your phone right now, and things should look pretty normal at first — you can still check on devices, control your Google Wifi, use your lights, and run routines. But keep working your way across the screens on the app’s bottom nav bar, and you’ll start running into trouble.
For starters, the Activity feed is just completely broken, as spotted by the team at 9to5Google. While that’s really just a minor annoyance, the app’s also suffering from a more functional outage, as the Settings screen is also utterly inaccessible at the moment.
If you were in the middle of configuring your smart home, the lack of Settings access is going to be a problem, absolutely. But for the moment, we’re just happy that this outage isn’t affecting more of the Home app, and we can largely keep on using our connected devices like normal.
We’ve reached out to Google to see if the company has any news about what’s going wrong here or advice on how to get Home up to full working order again, and will update you if and when we hear anything.